Will you be our valentine? We can’t spend every dollar to our name on you or put you in the flyest gear (as early 2000’s R&B teen phenomenon Sammie would) but we can deliver you a steamy playlist full of love, affection, and compassion. Be ours.

Back in early 2012, we stumbled upon a mysterious collective known as “Algiers”, a band whose name conjures bloody images of political defiance, independence and a nation’s struggle with a brutal imperialist history. They teased us with a ridiculously addictive single called “Black Eunuch” (now wiped clean from the internet, somehow), then appeared to have gone off the digital map.

While they seemed to have ceased activity, a subscription to their Facebook & Tumblr pages revealed a group committed to shedding light on impactful cultural moments of artistic protest and enlightenment, ranging from recordings of James Baldwin and Michel Foucault interviews, to Sun Ra and Suicide performances. After hearing more of the band’s material, it’s clear that elements of each of these carefully chosen influences inform the band’s sound and ethos.

At this point, we know Algiers have been brewing an album’s worth of killer material set to release sometime “soon.” Singles from the record are beginning to slowly penetrate the digital space, so we’ll share two with you with much excitement. While it defies characterization, the band’s sound melds fragments of folk, gospel, post-punk, psychedelia and electronic with Southern Gothic reverberations.